How To Rank Coen Brothers Movies (And Why We Can’t Stop Ranking Them)

Last week, as soon as I was able, I watched the 18th Coen Brothers film, the western anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, on Netflix. And then I watched it again. I did this because I love the Coen Brothers, and also because I am addicted to ranking Coen Brothers films.

I am clearly not alone in this. It seems like every time there’s a new Coen Brothers film, somebody (or manysomebodies) finds it necessary to offer up an updated list of the best (although they really mean favorite) movies in Joel and Ethan’s canon. No other filmmaker inspires this kind of compulsively orderly fandom. With the legends of an older generation, such as Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg, it’s generally accepted which four or five movies are the best. For contemporaries of the Coens, such as Spike Lee and Jim Jarmusch, we all know which eras in the ’80s and ’90s represent their respective pinnacles. When it comes to the directors who immediately followed the Coens — Tarantino, the Andersons, Sofia Coppola — there still aren’t enough movies to make ranking them all that interesting.

The Coen Brothers have made a lot of movies over the course of 35 years, and almost all of them are good. They have worked in many different styles — period drama, slapstick comedy, southern noir, revisionist western — and yet all of their films are united by a common Coens-ness. This makes their films easy to measure against each other, and also uniquely open to interpretation based on the specific needs of the viewer; what one person might appreciate about the Coen Brothers (stoner jokes!) might be completely different from what another person appreciates (the philosophical themes about how God is dead and mankind is ruled by fate!).

For this reason, you can make a reasonable case for a dozen films each being the best of the Coens. (You can also make a mildly annoying contrarian case for four of the remaining movies, and an insane and inexplicable case for the other two.) As I was watching Buster Scruggs, I wish I could say I was completely lost in the wordless interplay between Liam Neeson’s heartless traveling huckster and his armless and legless companion (Harry Melling), or the burgeoning romance between the stranded Alice Longabaugh (Zoe Kazan) and the dashing cowboy Billy Knapp (Bill Heck). I was mostly absorbed, but I was also thinking: Is this better than True Grit, the other Coens western from the ’10s? Would I dare put it in the company of Inside Llewyn Davis, or even (gasp!) No Country For Old Men?

The urge to make Coens-related lists truly is a mental illness.

Because I believe in transparency, I am going to walk you through my process of ranking of Coen Brothers movies, in light of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. In a sense, I suspect that all Coens Brothers lists are assembled in a similar fashion.

First, let’s ask two very important questions:

IS THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS THE BEST COEN BROTHERS FILM?

No, it is not.

IS THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS THE WORST COEN BROTHERS FILM?

I’m sorry, did The Ladykillers change its name to The Ballad of Buster Scruggs? No? Well, then of course it’s not the worst.

Now, we have already established that The Ballad of Buster Scruggs falls somewhere between no. 2 and no. 17 on my list. In order to land on a more precise ranking, it is helpful to go through the six tiers of Coen Brothers films.

It says a lot that the most narratively cohesive movies for them are the lowest ranked movies. A: I dare anyone to talk about a scene in Fargo that doesn’t involve a woodchipper. B: All their opening scenes are boring. How do you talk about the Ladykillers having a boring opening but rank Simple Man so highly? C: who the fuck enjoys Barton Fink that doesn’t also masturbate to The Kid Stays in the Picture?

True Grit is almost flawless for a lover of the western. I can’t imagine someone who likes westerns not liking it. Oh Brother is probably their most yarny piece of art. I adore it. I would do anything to sit with someone who would rather watch No Country than one of those two.

No Country is an amazing piece of film. That said, it’s mainly due to Cormac McCarthy. Sure, the Coens’ did what most screenwriters/directors can’t do, which is translate a nearly flawless book into a nearly flawless movie, but the reason Anton Chigurh is so menacing is – at the least – halfway due to McCarthy.

In that, it vastly overpowers True Grit as an adaptation, though that’s like saying the 1998 Yankees vastly overpowered 2000 Tiger Woods – they’re both amazing, but hard to compare. No Country as an adaptation against an original like O’Brother? That’s harder to say. One’s basically a horror movie disguised as a thriller and the other is a comedy, retelling Greek myth using bluegrass. Again, it’s like comparing apples to iPhones.

I’d rather put up Raising Arizona against O’Brother any day. Less of a soundtrack but better story. There was a time in my life where those two movies were on constant repeat in my household and I love them dearly, but damn if “son, you’ve got a panty on your head,” or “I dunno, they had Yoda’s on them and shit!” takes over the bona fide paterfamilias of Everett McGill. (Plus better use of Holly Hunter)

Ladykillers wasn’t a terribly made film, it’s just as if the characters were procedurally generated with a wacky-Cohen-brothers app and thrown together had no real chemistry. The premise itself wasn’t unsound.

Anyone who does not think the clever progression of storytelling and post modern Shakesperian lyrical cadence of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs was not brilliant was simply not paying attention. Want social commentary on the ills of capitalism, Marxism, or the travails of Robert Browning’s “Sordello”? Want Baudelaire? Tennyson? Elliot? It’s all there. Just pay attention and enjoy.